(no subject)
I like to pretend that one of the disadvantages of travelling with my mother is that I cannot wrest the camera from her hands without a prybar; in reality, however, she's quite happy to let me take all the snapshots I want. It's just that I only want to take a picture when I see the cover of National Geographic. Show me rare wildlife or exotic architecture, and the edge of my vision develops a golden tinge. So I don't take many pictures, but the ones I do carry the weight of high expectations.
But the real disadvantage of traveling with my mother is what few pictures I do take end up scattered among the thousands of megabytes she brings back from a trip, over somewhere in Michigan, and I end up not sorting through them for months. I hope you will forgive me then for the age of some of these photos. (Also anyone on dial-up will be loathe to forgive me for crashing his or her computer -- there are 3.5 megabytes behind the lj-cut, so be careful.)
The great Buddha of Nara, Japan, from November. Not being particularly spiritually inclined, all I can really say about it is, "That's one big Buddha."
In September, we visited Machu Picchu, and stayed down in the valley below the site at the Pueblo Hotel. So taken were we with its surroundings that we decided not to climb back up to the ruins on our second day but instead stay and enjoy the wildlife. The hotel boasts of being home to 111 species of butterflies:
And 156 species of birds, including its totem, the Andean Cock-of-the-rock:
But it is proudest of its 16 species of hummingbirds. Here's the most common, the chestnut-breasted coronet.
(I'm sorry, but I'm so taken by the detail in this that I feel the need to break your browsers:
)
While the grounds are endowed with nectar-providing flowers in abundance, it became more productive for me to just set up by one of the many hummingbird feeders and wait to see who would come along.
(The same picture, zoomed in a little:
)
I can't tell you how frustrated I had gotten trying to catch this Collared Inca before I finally lucked out:
But not as frustrated as I am at the focus in this shot:
The bark, though, is perfect!
But the real disadvantage of traveling with my mother is what few pictures I do take end up scattered among the thousands of megabytes she brings back from a trip, over somewhere in Michigan, and I end up not sorting through them for months. I hope you will forgive me then for the age of some of these photos. (Also anyone on dial-up will be loathe to forgive me for crashing his or her computer -- there are 3.5 megabytes behind the lj-cut, so be careful.)
The great Buddha of Nara, Japan, from November. Not being particularly spiritually inclined, all I can really say about it is, "That's one big Buddha."
In September, we visited Machu Picchu, and stayed down in the valley below the site at the Pueblo Hotel. So taken were we with its surroundings that we decided not to climb back up to the ruins on our second day but instead stay and enjoy the wildlife. The hotel boasts of being home to 111 species of butterflies:
And 156 species of birds, including its totem, the Andean Cock-of-the-rock:
But it is proudest of its 16 species of hummingbirds. Here's the most common, the chestnut-breasted coronet.
(I'm sorry, but I'm so taken by the detail in this that I feel the need to break your browsers:
)
While the grounds are endowed with nectar-providing flowers in abundance, it became more productive for me to just set up by one of the many hummingbird feeders and wait to see who would come along.
(The same picture, zoomed in a little:
)
I can't tell you how frustrated I had gotten trying to catch this Collared Inca before I finally lucked out:
But not as frustrated as I am at the focus in this shot:
The bark, though, is perfect!